UFC reality series 'The Ultimate Fighter' moving off Friday nights for Season 17 on FX

http://mmajunkie.com“The Ultimate Fighter,” the UFC’s long-running reality competition, will move out of its current Friday night time slot on FX to a different day of the week starting with Season 17.

FX executive Chuck Saftler on Wednesday confirmed the change during a media conference call promoting the season, which will begin taping later this month and will air starting in January on the cable network.

The UFC and FX announced Season 17 earlier this week with coaches Jon Jones, the UFC’s light heavyweight champion, and Chael Sonnen. The two will fight in April following the conclusion of the season.

It’s a move that UFC President Dana White has been anxious for since the UFC moved to FX for the 15th installment of the series, “The Ultimate Fighter Live,” in the spring.

That season of the show was the UFC’s first on FX. The previous 14 seasons aired on Spike TV, the promotion’s longtime cable home. But when the UFC signed a seven-year network deal with FOX in late 2011, FX and sister station FUEL TV became the UFC’s cable homes.

But in the Friday night time slot, ratings haven’t been up to what many would consider par for the show, and White has long believed that a different night of the week might work better. Now it appears he’ll get that wish.

“The show is going to move off of Friday nights,” Saftler said. “I can’t confirm the day right now, but it’s definitely moving off of Friday, it’s definitely moving to a weekday. There will be an announcement on that somewhere in the next 30 to 45 days.

“But I will say that Spike should watch their ass.”

The nature of Spike’s deal with the UFC allowed it to run its library of UFC content throughout 2012, even though the UFC was part of the FOX family of networks. That meant Spike frequently would counter-program UFC cards, particular on FOX or FX, with library content from its many years broadcasting the promotion. And when it came to “TUF” on FX, Spike often would offer up past “TUF” content from the Spike years head-to-head with the fresh stuff on the new network.

And that, of course, was the nature of Saftler’s tone toward the competition at the UFC’s former cable home.

“Spike clearly has been dogging us for most of this year with the launch of the two seasons of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ by trying to create viewer confusion and scheduling old episodes against ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ and trying to pass them off as new content,” Saftler said. “They’ll be off of the UFC game effective in January. They’re going to try to launch a new product, there’s going to try to launch their own reality show that competes with ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ or does a very similar thing with their Bellator product. We watched how they behaved, and we’re well aware of their behavior and how they’ve acted competitively. I’m not ready to commit to (head-to-head), but we’re certainly going to be watching how they schedule, what they schedule and where they schedule.”

Bellator Fighting Championships, which like Spike is owned in part by Viacom, is moving to Spike in January from its current home at MTV2. And the promotion has a reality program planned for the network, as well, though it is not yet known how similar that program might be to “The Ultimate Fighter.”

But as far as White and the UFC are concerned, a new night may be the missing piece to the puzzle to put a little pep back in the show’s ratings.

Saftler said that’s something the FOX team has been monitoring, and after two seasons on Fridays, this past spring as well as the current “TUF 17″ currently airing, FX is willing to give things a try on a new night.

“We were absolutely monitoring the Friday situation and we wanted to see if there’s a day that can work better for the show,” Saftler said. “Certainly with Jones and Sonnen as the coaches for this upcoming season, we have the best casting that we’ve seen for this show. And we have really high expectations for what the ratings will be as a result. We think we can move off of Friday, and with the casting, we have very big expectations for the ratings.”

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